Lost Voices
by RealDove-Staar
Summary: Amy is one of those lost girls. After her father vanishes in a storm at sea, she is struck in a grim, gray Alaskan fishing village with her alcoholic uncle. Abandoned on the cliffs near her home, she undergoes a transformation and becomes a mermaid. Amy is thrilled with her new life, until she discovers the catch, they drown humans. Please read female Oc needed. two bad.
1. Chapter 1

Lost Voices

By Dove-Staar

Lost Voices 1

"Amelia? Did you even hear the question?"

Amy had been gazing out the window at the darkened sky sinking over the harbor still dotted with rough floating ice, the mountain walls of shadow-colored spruce and rusty boulders under the greenish, glassy dusk of a coming storm. Mr. Draken's voice jolted her back into the drab classroom with its tan desks and low scarred ceiling, and she noticed with dismay that half a dozen faces were already turning to stare into the back corner where she sat under a tattered map of the world. None of her other teachers ever called on her. Only Mr. Draken insisted on trying to make her talk. If only he would leave her alone, Amy knew, the other kids would forget her existence completely.

She tightened her body and stared as blankly as she could at the board as the first giggles started up around her. Her stomach began to twist and her hands turned horribly cold. She squeezed them together under the desk to stop the trembling.

"Amelia? You should be on page one twelve of your textbook. The third problem?"

She _was _on page one hundred and twelve. She gaped down automatically at the third problem, and she was sure she knew the right answer. It was obvious.

The laughter got louder and faster. It buzzed around her like angry wasps. Mr. Draken waved a hand to quiet everyone, but it didn't have much effect. She hated the concern growing in his droopy grey eyes. Amy knew that the quickest way to make them all ignore her again would be just answer the question. _Parabolic. _She opened her mouth to say the word.

Nothing came out except a kind of faint croak. Everyone could see her now, and almost all of them were giggling. Her hands were shaking so much that she had to sit on them.

Desperately Amy tried to force her voice to shape the word. Just one word and she would be free again.

Her croaking got a little louder. Most of the time she could talk as well as anyone, even if she almost always chose to keep quiet. Lately, though, her voice had developed a habit of abandoning her whenever she needed it most. Someone squealed and threw a wad of paper at her, clipping her on the side of her head.

That was enough to knock Mr. Draken out of his trance. His wobbly eyes spun away from Amy. His huge round cheeks blushed scarlet, though there was no reason why _he _should feel embarrassed.

"Evod?" Mr. Draken yelped, too loudly, to a girl sitting all the way at the front. It was almost a shout. It was as if he thought he could cancel out the ugliness of what he'd done, drawing all those eyes down on the skinny pink-quilled hedgehog who huddled in the back of his class, struggling with the loss of her voice.

"I have _no _idea what the answer is to this stupid problem, Mr. Draken," Evod twittered in her happy voice. "Nobody does except you." The shrieks of laughter that followed were strangely excited, and Mr. Draken took advantage of the shifting mood, clowning as he worked out the problem on the blackboard. Even now he couldn't leave it alone, though. He kept shooting Amy guilty looks, pinching his lips together, and of course everyone noticed. Every time he glanced her way, a few more pairs of eyes flocked after his. Amy kept her face down, drawing a thicket of black hatched lines in her book until the ink became so dense that hardly any white shone through.

When the bell finally rang Amy felt sicker than ever. The other students grabbed up their backpacks and raced out, eager to get to the cafeteria for lunch. _Lunch. _Where in that bright blocky room would she ever be able to hide? Mr. Draken tried to catch her attention as she slipped past him, but Amy pretended not to notice.

"This is, like, eight grade already," a hedgehog hissed in her ear. "You act like some freaked-out ten-year-old." Amy kept her face blank and unresponsive, even when he prodded her arm.

She slunk after the other students, staying close to the walls. A crack of thunder smacked against her thoughts. It was terrifically loud. Lightning must have struck very close to the school.

_Not today, _Amy thought, and all at once she remembered the date again. Her stomach seethed, and she knew that the storm wouldn't just blow over. She'd have to spend the afternoon watching the rain lash down outside and listening to the windowpanes clashing like cymbals in the wind. It would be exactly the way everything was a year ago today: the day her father's boat hadn't come home.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

It wasn't a storm at all, then. Hot sunlight glared through the van's open window and burned her cheeks. A bright golden blob of sun curled on her palm like a kitten. A sign flashing by outside welcomed them to Missouri. Her father laughed and gunned the motor.

"You know they just don't make cops smart enough to catch up with me, don't you, baby doll. _Look _at that. Over the state line already, and they still don't know what hit them!" She smiled back at him, shy as always, and he beamed at her and twisted a lock of her long hair around on finger. Then he squinched his lips and shot her a look. "I mean, I guess I have to admit that maybe they could have caught me, once or twice" –he drawled it out playfully, and Amy knew he was faking his reluctance-"if I didn't have you to help me with _strategy. _You're my secret weapon, honey. You've got the mind of a great general. And not a one of them ever suspects it." Amy was already giggling when her father launched into the sluggish, moronic voice he always used to mimic policemen and judges. "You don't mean to say that that _sweet _little wisp of a thing could be the diabolical mastermind behind this incredible theft, do you? No, I'll never believe it!"

Amy knew he was only kidding. About the most she ever did to help was to stand lookout while her father loaded stolen chemicals or electronics into the back of their van. Even so, she loved hearing him say it. "You and me, we've got them all fooled, don't we? Now, as soon as we hit St. Louis I'll take you to the best bookstore in town, and you can pick out a whole damn stack. _And _for a hot fudge sundae. You've most certainly earned your share of the spoils."

Amy's bare feet were already propped high on piles of books and the duffle bag holding her clothes. Her gawky knees poked up in front of the dashboard. She could feel her right leg starting to get sunburn, but she didn't bother moving it. The rest of the van was stuffed with the weird-looking lumps of equipment her father had swiped from his last temporary job, this one doing maintenance work in a huge dry cleaning plant. Even the wind swirling across the front seat couldn't completely get rid of the sharp chemical stink. Sometimes her father wrinkled his nose into a ridiculous doglike snout and then gave her a sideways grin to let her know the smell bothered him too.

The smell changed in Amy's nose. Now it was the greasy stench of Tater Tots and gluey fried chicken. That moment in the van had happened almost three years before, and the memory suddenly seemed stale and cold, as if she had used it to comfort herself one too many times. Her eyes were still shut tight, but she knew that if she opened them she wouldn't see the bright sunshine on the highway anymore.

"Come back come back come back," Amu called silently to her father. She tried to make the words powerful and wild, so that he would hear them wherever he was. "It's been a whole year!" There was no answer. Just the giddy shouting of the kids roughhousing at the tables behind her and the piercing soprano of a teacher who was screaming at them. Amy kept arguing with her father anyway. "It's my birthday tomorrow. You can't miss it twice in a row!"

It didn't work. She couldn't see anything but the dark red insides of her eyelids. She was all alone in this horrible school, with no place to go but back to her uncle's tiny brown clapboard house two miles outside of town. She could disappear into the woods on days when it wasn't raining too hard, but that carried its own risks. Her uncle tended to get irritable if he didn't find her at home, and after a few drinks he might express his irritation by slamming her into a wall.

When the bell rang again, she realized that she hadn't touched her food.


	3. Chapter 3

Lost Voices

Chapter 3

Amy POV

The storm only got worse and worse as the day blew on. The lights went out and kids all over the school could be heard screaming. The teachers tried to calm them down, screaming over the kids and making the noise worse. I was silently sitting in the corner huddled up, reading my book and listening to my music. NO one cared.

"EVERYONE CALM DOWN!" Just as the principle tried to control the situation, a light fell from the ceiling after a huge boom. People screamed in slow motion and I saw a single girl just standing there. She seemed to be sad, depressed, and tired. Just as the light was connecting with her head, she turned into liquid. Like, her whole body just liquidated and slowly flowed toward the showers. I followed silently, watching the black goop with caution and leaving the hellhole behind.

The goop slipped into the drains and disappeared. I silently stood there, complimenting on whether I should look or not. Taking a deep breath, I peered into the drain. Nothing. The girl looked to be a light blue hedgehog. About my age I suppose. Anyway, she was gone. And I had no idea how.

A/N

OMG SO SORRY GUYS! I know I have not been updating in a while on this. Truth be told, I have no inspiration with it. I have been having writers block and my only recent bout of inspiration was with Wrong. And that's because I was doing homework XP I will try to update this a lot more and get inspiration. I may only hope you can accept this REALLY short chapter.


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